


DELTΔ Part I: The Onyx Talons (Cancelled)

by BirdAntlers



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Betrayal, Gen, Greyscale AU, Kidnapping, Mental Instability, Violence, Zim has issues, all flavors of despair, eventual warfare, fictional aliens, identity crises for everyone, idk if getting turned into a different species is a trigger but, minor language, not many side chars just sayin, past consequences, so many issues, very long story, yeah that's in there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-08-23 02:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8310994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BirdAntlers/pseuds/BirdAntlers
Summary: “A war of beasts is coming…” | It’s a universe where Cthulu was never created. Dib is kidnapped one night, and he comes to realize that the species that kidnapped him is far more dangerous than anything he’s dealt with before. Before anything can be done, he is ripped from his body; forced to live out a period of time in the ranks of the mysterious syndicate, in the body of one of their own. As time passes, a history begins to unravel between Irk and this new enemy that runs so deep, it could spell war for everyone, and in the middle of it all is Zim. The two of them find themselves trapped in a race to deliver the news of the secret army to Irk before the first attack can be launched, and what follows is a bloody tale of biology, murder, and the limits of one’s own mind.I've abandoned this fic to turn it into something of my own. I still love the story and my characters but I want it to be something I make myself, and having it tied to a show that doesn't match the tone is counterproductive. I also want to get better at writing because when this was written my skill wasn't up to par. Cheers





	1. Highway

The black Subaru's tires spun as it went over an icy patch on the highway. The rear of the car lurched towards the other lane, drawing a honk from the truck next to them and a curse from Dib's father as he fought with the wheel. "Swear jar," Gaz muttered, not looking up from the GS4 in her hands while Dib tried to pry his hands off the dashboard. It figured that the salt trucks had missed a few spots right after Christmas on the busiest turnpike in Michigan.

"Sorry about that," Membrane huffed, though he sounded nothing of the sort, kneading the wheel with his hands in frustration. Dib and his family had been in Toronto for a week to celebrate Christmas with them via the insistent begging from his grandparents. It had been a long, boisterous, personal-space-invaded week, and his dad had gotten more and more jaded as it went. _Funny how he can work for days on end with no issue but one week with family and he's totally burned out_ , Dib thought bitterly. Aside from stopping for gas, they had been shut up in the car for what should have been a four-hour drive from Toronto back to their house, but the weather and traffic had made the commute drag on till dark.

Dib was holed up in the passenger seat staring out the window. His phone had died hours ago and he'd accidentally finished the book he got for the trip the day before, so he resorted to blowing fog on the glass and doodling shapes with his finger. He had just drawn a triangle when the car suddenly crashed over a pothole, sending Dib's forehead into his doodle.

"Damn road!" Membrane howled, struggling with the wheel again. "Enough, I'm taking the next exit." He messed with the GPS for a few minutes and after another while of driving they took a ramp off of the highway and into a dense forest. As the car picked up speed and resumed his window drawing.

"Don't do that," his father said. "It'll smudge the glass." Dib sighed in frustration and sat back, rubbing his eyes under his glasses.

"How much longer?" He groaned. "Gaz won't let me use the car charger"

"You'll just hog it like last weekend, Dib," she said. "Mine's not even at fifty percent yet."

Dib craned his neck, twisting around in the seat to glare at his sister, still clinging the handheld. Her phone was sitting in the cup holder, plugged in but turned off.

"You're not even using your phone, though! You wouldn't care if I hadn't said anything!" She didn't respond, though she moved to put her phone under her thigh so Dib couldn't reach it. He gritted his teeth in irritation and flipped back around, slumping in his seat. "Dad!" he persisted.

Membrane suddenly jerked the wheel to the right, pulling the car over onto the side of the road while narrowly avoiding the tree line. Without turning off the car, he threw open his door and Dib cringed at the biting wind that blew into the car. The scientist stormed around the trunk and yanked open the door behind Dib, grabbing the charger and unplugging the phone. He slammed the door and got back in the car, throwing the charger into the passenger side. It fell in the floor with a pitiful little _thunk._ Both children were totally silent.

"Are you happy now?" He said in a low voice. Dib could hear the concealed anger in his wavering tone, and he just nodded. His father repeated the gesture “Good. Now I'm putting this car in drive." He pointed at the ground, turning in his seat to look at both kids. "So help me, I am not switching gears again unless the engine catches fire. So, Gaz, stop being difficult, and you-" he pointed at Dib- "stop griping. Do I make myself clear?"

Dib slumped a little in his seat. "Yes," he muttered. His father rarely raised his voice at them so he kept his mouth shut while the scientist pulled the car out into the road again.

It had begun to snow lightly when they had pulled over, and the gravel became more dusted with white as the minutes passed. Dib plugged his phone into the car port and waited for the screen to light up, the uneasiness in his stomach loosening into despondency. His family felt miles away from him even when they were all sitting in the same car, and he wondered airily if he was even as bothered as he should've been. Any other year was easier to stomach, given that there was little change to the process: he and Gaz would put up the plastic tree from their attic on Christmas Eve, and the next morning they'd open whatever presents their father had gotten in the mail from family or- God forbid- bought himself. Often times the man wasn't even out of the basement to see them unwrap them. After that, life went back to normal and Christmas was reduced to a weirdly distant memory until next year.

Being around his dad's side of the family for a week was an excruciating contrast to the lifeless, unchanging routines of his own house. It was weird and invasive being at his grandparents', but it was also fascinating to see people who were so close to each other. He almost felt guilty for suspecting that all the sentiment was a cheap façade- a trick. Some part of him at least wanted to believe that other families wore the masks he had so many times; whether it was to crowds or cameras or whatever whenever his dad needed them to make an appearance for some convoluted change-the-world plan. He messed with the seat belt that was rubbing against his neck and yanked the collar of his sweater up to his jaw, trying to keep it from making a blister. The trees had gotten denser and the snow had deepened into a somewhat even blanket on the shoulders of the road and clumped against the bottom of the windshield into a compact line of ice.

Suddenly, his dad’s phone rang loudly from where it sat on the console and Dib jumped out of his skin with a gasp. Membrane grabbed the phone and began talking frantically to someone on the other end about hemp gasoline, probably eager to be taken out of the dead air in the car. Dib was shaken from his sullen thoughts as well, remembering his own phone in his hands and switching it on, hastily turning the screen brightness down after his eyesight returned. He opened the link he'd saved that was hooked up to a trail camera facing Zim's house, but nothing was really showing.

Zim hadn't changed much in the two years since he'd come to Earth, but his antics had gradually become more convoluted to the point where an incident would occur about every week rather than daily. This was both better and worse for Dib because while he had more time on his hands, Zim's plans were getting increasingly desperate and difficult to put a stop to (tectonic bumper cars was his last big idea). This had been year two of lying to his dad about being on the middle school football team as an excuse for the number of broken bones he'd accumulated from all of it. He had been scanning Detroit's news websites for anything weird and stressing out about it, but by some miracle nothing catastrophic had happened while he was gone. The only thing he thought was suspicious were the blackouts and power surges two days before, but then again a lot of the city's electrical boxes froze during the winter so it wasn't that uncommon.

He clicked through all of the different cameras; each showing no activity, though all the ones inside the base had unsurprisingly been disconnected for a few days. Most cameras he'd triad to plant in Zim's house always got cut somehow, but it didn't matter anyway. He'd be home soon enough. He turned off his phone and leaned back in the seat, staring at the trees until his eyes drifted out of focus and they all blurred together with the snow. Ahead of them, the sky was slowly brightening with distant city lights.

Δ Δ Δ

_To: DMothman2021@420mail.com_

_From: SENAssociationDB@420mail.com_

_Subject: Reconnaissance Assignment for Michigan Division 12/28/2035_

_Agent Mothman,_

_Your assistance is needed for a reconnaissance mission within the next 24 hours. At approximately 1:44 to 4:18 AM on December 24, there were major power outages in seven counties of northeast Michigan. We have reason to believe that the cause is an irregular signal detected north of the AuSable Charter Township, and as the Michigan Division of this organization, we expect you to handle it before the government can piece anything together. Send your findings ASAP after your investigation is complete._

_Question Everything,_

_Swollen Eyeball Network_

Dib read over the email a second time in disbelief, not quite awake enough to process it the first. He considered sending a retort saying that he was on Christmas break and AuSable was literally three hours from Detroit and _“holy cow three hours with no car what in the world are you smoking I’m 14.”_ He groaned in frustration and kicked the leg of his desk, causing a cup of pens to fall off the edge. One day. One day of real rest was all he had wanted after the nightmarish stay at his grandparents’ and the bullcrap couldn’t cease for even that long. Sometimes fighting for the good of mankind’s stupid asses was a pain in his, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

He had been planning to stay in his room with the blinds closed for the day so he could sleep and play Underwatch on his computer all day but when he turned on his computer his email notification for the SEN was staring him in the face and his day of nothing went down the drain. By now it was no secret that there was no “Michigan Division” because he was the only member of the organization that lived in the state, unless what other members there might have been miraculously became sick or died whenever there was an issue that warranted a callout. Annoying as it was, though, he could still be the only thing standing between Earth and destruction. He would have to suck it up and go.

Dib got up and trudged into the hall bathroom to brush his teeth. When that was done he grabbed his phone and went downstairs to eat breakfast and tell his dad about a “football game” out of town that he’d forgotten. Gaz was sitting on the couch in a big blanket watching a documentary on parasites and Dib took a mental note not to face the TV whenever he got his food. As he was pouring his corn flakes he ran over the bus routes in his head, trying to weed out one that would take him to AuSable or at least to a town that was close enough.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t had to go out of town- or the atmosphere for that matter- on other occasions, it was just rare for him to be gone for several hours. Just getting there and back would take six, and he would have to leave by three o’ clock if he wanted to get back before midnight. After all, he only had about 13 hours to get the investigation done since the email had been sent the previous night. He sat at the table and looked up bus lines to AuSable, but the closest that came up was a direct route to Grayling that didn’t seem too bad. The map showed it a little to the left of AuSable, maybe walking distance. He clicked the link and nearly spat out his cereal. _Forty-six dollars._ It would be nearly 100 dollars for a round-trip drive and it was a lot further than the map showed: adding a whole extra hour to the three it would take to get to Grayling. Angrily, he opened a new tab and typed _bus from Grayling to AuSable MI_ into the search bar. He paused for a moment and added _cheap_. It was another 25 dollars.

Dib groaned aloud and stood up, throwing his bowl in the sink and wishing it would shatter even though it was plastic.

“Keep it down, they just got to the botflies,” Gaz shouted. Dib just huffed in reply and stormed to the door of his dad’s lab, swinging it open to the smell of sulfur and smoke.

Dib tried his best to sound nonchalant, but if he didn’t ever have to practice lying it wasn’t like he could improve. His dad only ever kind of half-listened to things anyway so even when he got flustered the man got played like a fiddle. “Hey, dad?” he yelled, holding his nose. When there was no reply he continued. “Um, so, there’s kind of a football game that I forgot we had tonight and uh, I’m gonna have to go. It’s out of- it’s pretty out of town and the bus leaves soon so... I’m gonna go in a little while.” There were a few clangs from down the stairs and then he heard his dad’s reply.

“What? Oh alright, eh, good luck son!” Dib heaved a sigh of relief and turned to leave. “Wait, hold on,” his dad continued. “you’re having a game on Christmas break?” Dib froze mid step and a symphony of cuss words erupted in his mind.

“Um, yes? The schedule thing got messed up, and the game got scheduled a week early. Remember me telling you that?” There was a long, agonizing pause and Dib worried for a second that he’d been caught in a lie for the first time ever. The dead air kept going on and on.

“Hmm. Alright I suppose. Call your sister when you’re on the way home” Dib almost couldn’t reply for all the heart attacks he’d just had.

“Ha! Yeah okay, Dad, thanksbye,” he wheezed. He ran into the kitchen and put the coffee maker on the biggest setting there was, grabbing his phone and walking upstairs. While he was, his bad mood began to creep up again. The money was something he could take care of: his father hadn’t looked at their credit card balance in ages and Dib knew the PIN number, but it just felt really sleazy (and more difficult to hide) when a hundred-dollar chunk of it was what he was taking out. He stepped inside his room and flopped on his bed, begrudgingly filling out the ticket orders on the app. The bus would be at the stop a block over in one hour. When that was done he trudged over to his closet and started changing into more suitable clothes. After all, he was going to be out in the middle of the night, possibly on private property, tromping around in some forest for hours. By the time it was all said and done he was decked out in a black sweater, black snow pants, black combat boots, and a black coat. He grabbed his backpack that and stuffed it to the brim with throw- away cameras, notebooks, caffeine pills, and other stuff that might be useful. When he had finished prepping he grabbed his inhaler off the nightstand, stuffing it in his pocket and went downstairs to get some last-minute things.

The coffee he had poured was cold now, and he chugged the entire thing in one go. It tasted awful, but it was easier to drink it that way than having to wait for it to get cool. After that he started a new cup and ran into his dad’s room, and got a big gray scarf. It was a little too big, and he had to wrap it around his neck several times, but it would work. In the kitchen, he stuffed the thermos of coffee into his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. He caught sight of the meat cleaver sticking out of the kitchen’s knife block and he stared at it for a moment. _I’m going 300 miles upstate by bus on my own._ He grabbed the cleaver and put it in the inside pocket of his coat without another thought.

Gaz was still watching the parasite show when he got to the front door.

“Hey,” he said. “You’ll cover for me, right?” His sister knew the football thing was a lie, but she didn’t care enough to tell their father that. She turned and looked him up and down apathetically.

“Edgefest isn’t until spring, Dib.” Dib huffed and grabbed a black ski hat off of the coat rack by the door, scowling at his sister.

_“Answer.”_

“Tell me where you’re going.” Irritation flared up in his chest.

“If you must know,” he growled, “I have to drag myself onto a smelly bus for four hours and root around for something causing power-outages in the snow for heaven knows how long because there isn’t _one other person_ this side of Canada who’s going to do it.”

“Tragic,” she said flatly

“Yeah. Are you going to cover for me if Dad asks where I am?”

“Like he ever asks.”

 _“Gaz.”_ She paused for a second like she was in thought.

“Fine, but bring me back food.”

“Fine! Just- ugh, never mind.” He hated how his sister pushed his buttons like that. Glancing at his watch, he gasped. The bus would be at the bus stop in ten minutes. He yanked the hat down over his hair, tucking the unruly strands up under it, and opened the door to the blinding snow.

“See you,” Gaz said. He slammed the door behind him and ran down the sidewalk, oversized scarf flapping in his wake.


	2. Huron

The bus lurched to a halt at a dirt-road bus stop, and Dib was shaken out of his sleep by the squealing of stiff breaks; his coffee obviously having not done its job. There was nobody on the bus now, and he tipped the driver before stepping out the door and into a ditch filled with old snow. He winced at the sudden cold but turned and got out a brief “Thanks,” before the doors hissed shut. The street was completely dark, and after the bus had backed up and rattled away the air was left silent in its wake. His breath billowed out and turned to steam in the glow of a distant stop light left vacant for the day, blinking red, on and off in a futile cycle. Somewhere in the distance, an owl shreed.  
AuSable itself was a Podunk fishing community known only for its river trails and ability to attract old people looking for a vacation spot, and the fact that it was in the middle of nowhere was probably to blame. In Dib's case, it just meant he'd probably be out till dawn, which goaded up fresh irritation in the middle-schooler’s head. Nonetheless, he pulled his jacket hood up and made way for the few lights in the distant trees.

The dark road turned into pavement further down, and Dib could see buildings beyond that. By the time he was among them, snow had started to fall; first a flake here and there, but then more plentiful until the air was alive with them. He ducked under the awning of a closed gas station and pulled out his phone, looking for any road or trail that could take him north without having to tromp blindly through the forest to who knows where. He didn't even know what to expect with such a vague thing to look for. Electric stuff, big deal. Dib honestly didn't know why a cop or electrician couldn't look into this, and the more he thought about it, the more annoyed he became. Looking around the street, he couldn't tell if the town was just asleep or in the middle of a power outage right now. Nonetheless, the dark avenue was a little creepy. Just a little. He finally found a website for the town complete with a map of hiking trails. There were only two trails going the right direction at all. One that went north a bit and curved back down to the far bank of the river, and the other which went way up into some backcountry along the coast before it looped around at the end and went the opposite direction. Dib didn't have to debate which one he'd choose.

Darkened shop windows stared vacantly at Dib under the orange glow of the street lights as he trekked up the sidewalk to the end of main-street. Quaint little buildings lined it, all shut up for the day. More than anything else, AuSable was quiet. Between the snow cushioning all the sound and the absence of any sound to begin with were extremely eerie. Dib found himself humming at one point trying to make some semblance of noise, and stopped for fear of anyone hearing it. According to his map, the trailhead was down by the pier somewhere.

Before he reached any dock, Dib stopped dead at the sight of a police car parked at the street's end. Luckily, it wasn't facing him, but he darted into a narrow alley before he could be seen by whoever was inside. It ended at a wider alley that lined a row of backyards, and if Dib squinted, he could make out a dark line of trees beyond them. Hopefully, the trail would be nearby. Even more hopefully, it wouldn't be within eye shot of any cops. In any other case, he wouldn’t pay it much mind, but in a town this small and quiet, a teenager dressed in black lurking around in the woods would certainly attract some attention.

It was at this point as he glanced down, that Dib realized his phone had been crippled by the lack of anything resembling service this end of the lake, and cursed venomously under his breath. He had no map as of now, and no way to call anyone, including the bus service.

In the gloom behind a blown glassware shop, a niggling little thread of fear wormed its way into Dib’s chest. What if something happened, or he got lost? Of course, this could just be a product of the power outages, but what if it wasn’t? either way he had no phone. Still, the fact remained that he was hours away from Detroit with no way to call someone.

Nonetheless, Dib made a beeline down the fence row for the trees, and to his relief there was a building between him and the car. However, he could see the shadowy figure of a trailhead was unavoidably in its eyeshot. He would have to cut through the trees. Keeping to the side of the fence, Dib jogged to the treeline and ducked under a fir, thankful for the snow that silenced his footsteps.

The dark of the woods, sheltered from any street lights, swallowed him as he stomped through the cushion of crunchy snow and all the dead underbrush it had entombed. He hiked on in the brush for a time, growing uneasy at the length of the walk. How long had he been in the trees? Was he even going in the right direction? He kept east toward the path, remembering what the map said.

Finally, the path peeked out from between the trees, and he felt a vice around his lungs unclench, releasing a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Wasting no time, he turned and jogged north to make up lost time. This was the longest hiking trail in AuSable, after all.

Behind him, far back at the edge of the trees he’d left behind, an unseen flash of yellow tape twitched and fluttered in the wind, warding off those few fishers or birdwatchers who neared the Blackstone Pond footpath.

Of course, those few were not Dib Membrane.

Δ Δ Δ

The path continued straight for a few minutes, lit only by lamp posts scattered through the trees and the flashlight in Dib’s hand. Here, it was harder for the wind to evade the trees and the forest was eerily still. The only sound was the crunch of gravel underfoot, and the mindlessness of walking in a straight line provided good time for planning. Trees of all kinds; fir, oak, spruce, framed the narrow walkway and made a constantly shifting layer of shadows behind the ones closest to him. If he wasn’t paying attention, something dark and alive-looking always appeared to flicker behind the first layer of trunks and he had to stop to make sure nothing was really there. It was pretty distracting and the sounds of whatever night animals in the darkness continually set him on edge. He decided he rather disliked forests.

Stopping at a bench near a lamp post, he set his backpack on the damp boards. Wiping some snow from the wood, Dib took out an electromagnetic field detector (courtesy of a ghost hunting magazine), wire cutters, a drugstore throw-away camera, and a back-up road map. It wasn’t much to work with, but the email hadn’t specifically said to fix the issue, just report his findings, and he thought it was perfectly reasonable to just find whatever telephone pole had blown over, snap a few pictures, and be on his way. Taking the EMF detector in his hands and putting the rest in his pockets, he resumed his walk.

He went on for a time when he became aware of a distant sound. It wasn’t an animal or- God forbid- person, but it was gradually becoming louder as he walked, a repeating drone. Not long after, he came to a bluff on the side of the trail. A biting wind suddenly buffeted him, and all of a sudden, there was Lake Erie, sprawling out all the way to the horizon- or at least if he could see the horizon. Fog covered the water like a huge blanket, though the choppy, black water right below him was still visible in the light of a lamp post. It hadn’t occurred to him how muffled the forest could make the mighty crash of the waves smashing against rocks, where the trees sliced off bits of the sound until there was no more room for it to slip through. He stopped under the lamp post and rested his hand on the frigid metal, leaning on it briefly to catch his breath. It looked like ink, deep and impossibly cold. Dib stepped away from the edge.

As normal as it was for him to be on escapades like this, he still sometimes got a thrill out of it. Obviously, none of his peers really gave a rip what he did on his weekends but he still felt proud sometimes that he could sneak out of the house and to Lake Erie at eleven o’ clock at night when other kids bragged about sneaking out at all. He stood there for a while, watching the water. He didn’t know why, but he felt like he was searching, waiting for something there in the whitecaps; something that was just beneath the surface which he couldn’t see. Maybe it was just his way of taking in the scenery, or wishing for things like a normal life or people who did care if he sneaked out, or was alone at Lake Erie, or spent a boatload of his dad’s money on bus tickets. Maybe it was a life where he didn’t feel like a ghost in his own house. Maybe it was something better than freezing alone in a forest right now. He couldn’t help shining his flashlight down past the rocks into the water; just in case, but there were only silver ribbons of light cut up by waves, and the murky shape of a fish below them. He scowled at the water, wistfulness dissipating. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.

There wasn’t much thought to Dib’s walking after that. He only looked at the EMF in his hands and regretted forgetting his gloves that were still in the car at home. At some point, long after he’d stopped keeping track of time, the path suddenly ended. There was a fishing pond and a picnic area, but he’d definitely walked the whole trail. He glanced down at the EMF and sighed. It was still silent as the grave, so he had to keep going. After checking the compass on his phone (it was the only thing of use right now, since it didn’t require service or internet), he carried on.

The pond was dark in the night, a thin sheet of ice forming on the glassy surface, and Dib saw snow dusting it on the drier patches as it fell. The whole forest was sheathed in ice this night, and the desolate place was spared any noise but the low ‘whoooo’ sound only winter wind could make when it had no leaves to disturb.

Dib walked past the snow-covered picnic tables and skirted the lake, taking care not to slip on the icy rocks opposite the sandy shore. When he was at the back end, at the very, very end of the footpath, the wall of undergrowth that greeted him was hair-raising. The trees in front of him made the darkness of the trail’s edge look pale in comparison. His stomach twisted at the thought of having to enter that curtain of black, of leaving this last human place for miles and entering the heart of the Huron National Forest.

He took a deep breath and turned around one last time to scan the picnic area, probably so inviting and peaceful on a summer afternoon, but for now was a barren, freezing pond, nothing more. To Dib, it was nothing more.

The last lamp post illuminated a golden stripe on the icy surface, like a glowing, tempting pathway toward civilization; toward home. His eyes caught sight of a big old statue that was nearer to him on the same side of the water. It was a weathered, mossy carving of a great horned owl, its placid stone eyes seeming to stare right at him, questioning. One granite wing was outstretched, ever pointing north, as did the etched compass rose clutched in its talons, weathered away by decades of winters like this one.

3,576 MILES TO THE NORTH POLE  
DEDICATED TO FREDERICK COOK BY TROOP 276 OF AUSABLE COUNTY  
CIRCA 1998

The snow-laden statue and the lamp’s light seemed to be contradicting each other, but Dib shook his head and stiffly flicked his flashlight on, shining it into the trees. There were no bears, no bigfoot or other creature in there to eat him, and dammit, he was going to have at least one day of peace before he had to drag his body back into school on Monday. He couldn’t afford burning moonlight being all concerned about a statue and a light.

Quickly, before he could change his mind, Dib turned and stormed into the treeline, letting the darkness wrap him in it; dense and absolute as granite wings.  
He had been walking in the disk of light for five minutes before he even realized the first few bulbs on the EMF detector were also flickering silently in the blackness.


End file.
